Do you remember when ...: The '49 tragedy of Ray Breton still resonates

By LEE SANFACON

Thursday, November 15, 2012

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RAY BRETON

On Tuesday, Oct. 16, many of us experienced for the first time the earth-shattering earthquake rattling the Rochester area. Sixty-three years ago almost to the day on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 1949 the Lilac City sports community was suddenly shocked and stunned when an All-Star Spaulding High athlete lost his life in a boating accident. Ray Breton, 20, drowned attempting to swim ashore to get another boat when the craft he was in capsized while fishing with companions Clifford Henderson, 32, and Harold Chapman, 27, on Gilman Pond in Alton.

From accounts in the Rochester Courier, Breton decided to swim 75 yards to shore while his two friends clung to the overturned boat. Breton, who underwent appendectomy surgery earlier in the summer, and weighted down being fully clothed, shouted to his two friends, “I can’t make it.”

Henderson, who survived, as did Chapman, told Rochester police he swam to the spot where Breton went down and grabbed Breton as he came up, they struggled, he said, as he attempted to get Breton ashore until both became exhausted.

Henderson said he did not know how he finally broke his friend’s grip but finally succeeded. When Breton didn’t come up again, Henderson continued swimming back to the capsized boat and he and Chapman pushed the boat ashore and drove to Alton and Farmington. Unable to reach authorities there, they continued on to Rochester reaching the police station at 1:05 a.m.

Re-constructing the tragedy, the survivors told Acting Ass’t Marshall Willis M. Hayes they had been fishing for horn-pout around 10:15 p.m. Tuesday evening. The boat leaked and when about half filled with water, they decided to return to shore and secure another boat. As they were paddling to shore, the craft capsized throwing them all into the water.

Henderson and Chapman clung to the bottom of the overturned boat and Breton said he would swim to shore, secure another boat and come back for them according to accounts reported in the Oct. 20, 1949 edition of the Rochester Courier.

Breton graduated from Spaulding High school in 1947. He was a right-handed pitcher and after graduation he signed a contract with the Boston Red Sox. He played for St. Albans, Vt., in the Northern League that year and in 1948 was with Auburn, N.Y. in the Border League. He went on to Roanoke, Va., in the Piedmont League and in the summer was transferred to the Oneonta Red Sox in the Canadian American League.

After his appendectomy, he returned home before the close of the season to recuperate. The top scorer on the Spaulding High 1946-47 basketball team under coach Mike Mirey, he finished with 277 points and selected to the all-tournament team.

In 1949, the Ray Breton Award was inaugurated honoring the Most Valuable basketball player on the Spaulding varsity team from the senior class.

The award was originally sponsored by Tony Villanova and later by Roy Allain, Sr. Louis Happy” Barisano and James “Jeep” Donlon were the first recipients of the award. (Note: We adamantly emphasize the Ray Breton Award along with the Pete Herman Award, named in honor of the former Spaulding High head football coach and presented annually to the senior member of the football team for sportsmanship, scholarship and leadership, are the two most distinctly significant awards in athletics at the high school. Pardon our personal interjection, but today trophies and awards are given out too numerously and on a whim.)

Ray Breton, who was the first Spaulding High basketball player to receive all-tournament honors, was inducted into the Rochester Lodge of Elks Sports Hall of Fame in 1987.

He was pre-deceased by a brother,

Edmund “Lefty” Breton (1924-1945), an equally talented athlete who also signed with the Boston Red Sox in the summer of 1943. He was killed in action aboard the aircraft carrier Franklin in the Pacific in March of 1945 and was buried at sea. He was also inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1999.

Hundreds attended the funeral for Ray Breton at St. Mary’s Church, then on Charles street (now located on Lowell Street.) Teammates and close friends served as pall bearers under the direction of the Edgerly Funeral Home. The pall bearers were Gerry Gilman, James Leocha, Jimmy Edgerly, Jack Douglas, Ken Taylor, Edmund “Babe” Portrie, Ken Flood and Bob Arlin, Sr.

Other family members were a brother, Robert Breton and two sisters, Alva McGree and Ruth Routhier. They were the sons and daughters of Arthur A. and Eva E. Breton, formerly of Somersworth.

Lee Sanfacon’s “Do You Remember When ...” column, looking back at Rochester’s sporting past, will appear occasionally in the Rochester Times.